Easy Rider

This may be the closest you'll ever get to Matthew McConaughey wrestling a grizzly bear

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It shouldn't surprise anyone that Matthew McConaughey seems to star in every third romantic comedy—he's the perfect date-movie draw. Not only does the 39-year-old Texan possess a pec/dimple combination potent enough to hypnotize theaters full of women, he's also got something to offer their dates. What straight man could resist indulging in a McConaughey's-my-bro fantasy, complete with light beer and hours spent chillin' and grillin' outside the actor's famous Airstream, with the possibility of a wee-hours nude conga jam? Nicknamed "the Redneck Buddha" by actual bud and fellow shirt-eschewer Lance Armstrong, the onetime romancer of Penélope Cruz and Sandra Bullock has lately been hangin' with Brazilian model Camila Alves, who last July gave birth to their son, Levi. This month, McConaughey steps out on his two-time rom-com partner Kate Hudson to woo Jennifer Garner in The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

ELLE: Did you have any odd misunderstandings about human sexuality as a kid?

MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY: Oh yeah. From checking out Playboy I always thought—jeezum, we still don't have a better word for it than vagina, do we?—I thought it was behind the pubic hair, and it faced horizontal. You know, east/west, not south. So the first time I got to third base, man, I was hunting for a long time.

ELLE: You could have easily missed third altogether and wound up in a place so forbidden it never even got its own base.

MM: And I didn't want to go there. I was real spooked about hunting around, so it took about an hour to find.

ELLE: Congrats on fatherhood. You were quoted saying that during Camila's 14 hours of contractions, you "got tribal on it" and provided a soundtrack of Brazilian music. Having also attempted to deejay my wife's labor, I'm curious: At any point did she threaten to shove the boom box down your throat?

MM: Oh, they'll snap. Camila was the one who wanted the music, but she was also really quick to say, "Skip that fuckin' song!" So here I was blazing through this playlist while she's nodding her head yay or nay, and I'm like, This next song better have that groove or I'm going to have to run across the bed and change it.

ELLE: Your brother Rooster famously named his son Miller Lyte McConaughey. When your son was born, was there any impulse to follow in that family naming tradition?

MM: Like calling him Jose Cuervo? No. I wouldn't dare try to compete with Rooster. Now he's got a daughter coming, and I think her name is going to be Margarita. I'm serious.

ELLE: Barbara Walters seemed to be hitting on you during your 2006 interview, which ended with you rubbing her feet. If you'd both been single, might you have let her have her way with you?

MM: I would've had to tell those cameras to cut.

ELLE: All joking aside...?

MM: Look, I think Anthony Quinn once said, "There's something wrong with any heterosexual man under 80 if he can't find an angle with every woman." There's a lot of truth to that.

ELLE: Any woman you can think of who might not be coverworthy, but whom you find attractive?

MM: Not so specifically, but yeah. And I see it more with black women, who get dressed up and they're wearin' everything to fit snug, and they're walking the walk. And you're like, Man, look at you go! Where did you get that? She might be a larger package, but boy, she sure understands how she's wrapped.

ELLE: In your "Beef: It's What's for Dinner" radio ads, when you say, "Isn't it time you took your appetite on a romantic protein getaway?... Just the two of you lying side by side under sirloin skies," you make eating meat sound erotic. Could you do the same to persuade your girlfriend to schlep with you to Home Depot to pick up a generator for the Airstream?

MM: I'm sure so, man. You'd have to be kind of general, something like, "Mmm. Gonna go for a drive, check out the toolbox for some heavy machinery, and come back ready for a road trip. And since you're going to be my copilot, I need you overseein' what we're goin' to pick up because we're gonna have some choices to make. And I know you've been wantin' to pull this Airstream so we can make good time. It would be good that you're down there checkin' out the machinery."

ELLE: You wrestled cows to prepare for your role in Reign of Fire. Would you wrestle a croc for the woman you loved? A grizzly?

MM: Rather not. But if you can catch eye contact with a mammal, you can buy yourself some time—because as another mammal, you can communicate. You can't trust a reptile. But I have thought about how to win that fight with the grizzly.

ELLE: Do tell.

MM: I believe right as that grizzly gets to you, he's going to rear up, open his paws, and come down on you. You're going to have to shoot the gap, go in straight to the chest, and take your bowie knife to the gut and pull up through the rib cage. If it's a death shot, that grizzly's going to fall on you. The real trouble's going to be getting out from under it.

ELLE: I'm stunned by the amount of thought you've put into this.

MM: Oh, I have dreams about this kind of shit. I don't want to wrestle any of these things, but I'm just saying, that's what I'd do if the situation arose where I'm just sitting there and I go, Oh, look there. That grizzly has got my girl and child. How we gonna work this out?